"I wasn't trying to justify myself," he said gruffly. "Or if I was, it was only through force of habit." He touched her cheek with the back of one hand, a brief caress, but one that tingled right through her. "I thought I saw disapproval in those pretty blue eyes. Maybe because I'm so used to getting it from my parents."
"They don't like Kinikinik Lake?"
"They don't like much I do." From Curtis, B.J. knew that was true. The elder Mixalls disapproved of both of their sons. An artist and an art dealer were not what they had thought they were raising. The very macho owner of one of the country's largest trucking firms had expected, if not truck drivers, then at least businessmen interested in running the company from its Toronto main office.
"My father considers buying an entire lake, even with an active fifteen-bedroom guest lodge thrown in, a bit excessive," Cal went on with a low laugh. "At least since my prime reason was to keep a flock of trumpeter swans company."
His chuckle was warm and she liked the sound of it. "But self-indulgence or not, I found I needed this place. Those magnificent birds were an inducement I couldn't resist. And as long as I own this lake, nobody is going to be using the lead shot that kills so many of them every year in other places."
He got up and reached down a hand for her. Automatically, she took it and he tugged her to her feet. He led her into the dining room, where a large oil painting hung beside a stone fireplace, showing a pair of white birds with graceful necks and long black beaks. They were of the same breed as the one in the painting in her bedroom. One stood splayfooted on a sheet of ice, head lifted toward the other as if in welcome. The second bird, its huge wings outspread, the light of a pale sun opalescing through the tips and edges, was coming in to land beside its mate. Somehow, Cal had captured the sense of their bonding. The one on the ice was happy the other was there, was bidding it welcome. If they had been humans, they'd have been running toward each other with arms outstretched.
"Look at them, B.J.," he said almost reverently. "Aren't they incredible?"
"They are beautiful," she said, supremely conscious of the warmth of his fingers around her hand. The birds impressed her, but not as much as the man who had captured their inner beauty. "How big are they? And why are they called trumpeters?"
"They're the largest North American bird," he told her, his gaze still on the painting, "with a wingspan greater even than the bald eagle, although eagles do prey on their young, along with wolves and coyotes." He turned and looked down at her, his eyes agleam with pleasure. "I've been immersed in a love affair with them since I first saw them come winging in here out of a sky so blue it made my eyes ache, calling with voices that filled the entire valley. They were named trumpeters because of their call, but a thousand human trumpeters could never make the same kind of music that a hundred of those birds can. Oh, but they're something! You have to see them and hear them to know what I mean. They're so majestic, they do something to my soul."
Turning, still holding her hand, he led her back to the lounge. He seated her on the couch, then refilled their glasses before sitting down beside her. He gave her an account of the life history of the birds he loved, and as he talked, his fingers touched the back of her hair, toying with it idly as if he were unaware he was doing so. B.J. didn't dare move, and something fluttered inside her as she watched his animated face, heard the passion in his voice.
"They were once nearly extinct because of over-hunting. They were shot and skinned, and the skins shipped away to Europe."
"Skins? They were skinned like furbearing animals?"
"Yes. And for the same reason. Fashion, mostly. Women's muffs were stuffed with swansdown. They made powder puffs out of it, and the quills were used for pens. By the end of the nineteenth century, the swans were seriously endangered. In 1916 there were only an estimated one hundred of the birds left in the entire world."
"You said 'once' nearly extinct? Are they safe now?"
"Yes," he said with satisfaction. "And it's all thanks to one couple and their daughter. In the twenties and thirties, a couple named Edwards, up north of here, took an interest in the plight of the birds and started feeding them." He shook his head. "That GOLDEN SWAN • 49
man ... he was some kind of a hero. You must have heard of him. Ralph Edwards of Lonesome Lake. Books have been written about him, and at least one movie made. Each year he carried hundreds of pounds of seed—on his back, because there were no roads—to feed those birds, and brought their numbers back. Now the swans range all over the province and down into Washington, maybe Oregon, and winter on many lakes and coastal inlets. When Edwards was no longer able to continue his work, his daughter, Trudy, took over. She learned to fly a plane partly so she could feed the swans."
"Do you feed them?"
"No. There's no need now. The flock is strong enough to let nature care for them, and there's plenty of food here. You saw how red their heads and necks were?" She nodded. "They feed underwater, and get stained by the silt at the bottom of the lake. That's also why they are dying in great numbers from lead shot. It sinks to the bottom and they scoop it up as they feed. But not here," he added. "Here, at least, they're safe."
"And you spend the winters here to make sure they stay that way?" She was amazed and touched by his love of the big birds. Was this the same man who for so long she'd believed to be insensitive?
"I don't spend the winters here," he said. "I come up for a few weeks to paint the swans, and just to visit them, but I must wait until the lake's frozen solid so I can use skis on the plane." He smiled and touched her hair again. "I'd like you to see them, B.J. Those swans are a sight to behold. Will you come? In the winter?" Almost as an afterthought, he added, "And the girls, of course."
B.J. smiled. "That would be nice," she said noncommittally. Of course she wouldn't be coming up there in the winter. Not even with the girls.
She wanted to move away from that soft, tantalizing touch on her hair. He had fixed her with a warm gaze, though, and she couldn't force her body to action. She was too deliciously conscious of his fingertips slipping lazily through her curls, brushing her nape lightly, sending tingles down her spine. Her nipples tightened and little flutters warmed her lower belly. She shivered, knowing she wanted him, wondering why she had never wanted anyone else in exactly this same way.
Was this what she had been waiting for for so many years? Was he the reason she had resisted the advances of other men? Because she had known, somewhere on some hidden level, that Cal Mixall was in the world, and when she looked good enough to please him, he would want her? She tried to breathe and felt her breath catch in her throat. She knew he heard it, because his fingers tightened in her hair and his face became very still as his gaze held hers.
"I think it's time," he said softly.
"For what?"
"For that kiss we've both been waiting for."
4
"What? We aren't ... I mean, I haven't been ..." B.J. stopped, drew in a deep breath, and tried again. "No, It's not," she said, this time managing to project a calm she didn't feel. Dammit, what was the matter with her? It wasn't as though no man had ever given her advance notice of his intentions before. But never had such notice sent her into such a panic. It was, she knew, simply because it was Cal Mixall sitting there touching her, gazing at her, his intentions clear in his slumberous eyes. Quickly, she moved away, getting to her feet and putting distance between them.
"It's time to say good night instead," she said.
Rising, Cal took the empty glass from her fingers and set it down. He touched the tip of her nose. "You're running away."
Of course she was running away. She wasn't stupid. He was more than she could handle and she knew it. "I'm tired."
He grinned. "Does that mean you won't be able to run very fast?"
She lifted her brows. "I'm sure I won't have to," she said. "I doubt that you're the kind of man who ever forces his attentions on a woman."
He tapped her nose again and laughed. "How prim that so
unds, Miss Gray. Are you prim? Have you said no?"
She hesitated. Was she prim? She'd never thought so before. But with him, maybe primness would be a saving grace. Aloud she said, "I don't think so. But as I said, I am tired. Good night." She moved quickly, but not quickly enough, because he captured her and held her still while he gazed into her eyes.
"You didn't answer my other question," he reminded her, quite unnecessarily. She knew perfectly well she hadn't. He repeated it very softly. "Have you said no to me, B.J.? Are you saying that?"
She tried to draw in a breath, but her throat was too tight. Her voice had no force as she said, "Cal . . . please." He nodded as if he understood that she didn't want to be asked, which was something she hadn't understood herself until that moment. Then he kissed her until her eyes closed, and she would have slumped except that he was holding her up. When he lifted his head and she opened her eyes, he was looking at her with a strangely speculative expression, and frowning slightly.
She stepped back from him. "Good night," she managed to say. She turned and headed out of the room. "B.J."
His voice made her hesitate, and she glanced back at him. He hadn't moved.
"Are we going to be friends?" he asked.
Were they? "I don't know."
"But... we aren't enemies, are we?" She drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly, silently. "No. No, Cal. We don't have to be enemies."
"Good." With three long strides, he was beside her. His arms were around her and he was kissing her long and hard and deeply, his tongue sweeping aside any barrier she might have put up and tasting every crevice within the heat of her mouth. Lifting his head, he looked at her, again with that puzzled, considering expression. "Kiss me back, B.J.," he said in a soft, growly voice that rubbed over her nerves like silk velvet. "Like you did before."
"When I . . ." she started to say, but he didn't give her a chance to finish, only took her mouth once more in another devastating kiss. Like you did before . . . His words echoed in her whirling mind. What had he meant? What had she done before that pleased him? She had only tried to taste him. She flicked out the tip of her tongue and stroked it over his lower lip . . . and felt him shudder. His arms tightened around her and he groaned softly, licking her upper lip just as she'd done to his bottom one. It felt. . . incredible, and heat curled in little flickering flames all over her body. He did it again, and she trembled, clenching her fists in his hair.
"Oh, lady, but you do things to me," he breathed when he lifted his head. "Open your eyes. Look at me."
Her heart full of wonder, she obeyed. His eyes were jet black and bottomless, and his breath ragged. He lifted a hand and touched a spot on her throat. "There," he said. "There it is. That fascinates me, B.J."
Under the pressure of his fingertip, she could feel the wild pulse in her throat. It throbbed everywhere, not just where he touched. For a moment she could only stare at him, then she, too raised a hand and touched him. High in his temple, just at his hair-line, a pulse hammered. Smiling, she stroked her fingers over it. "You have one, too."
With that, she slipped out of his hold and was gone, and Cal stood for a long time, thinking, before he turned off the lights and retired.
Cal finished his breakfast and shoved his plate away. 'That," he said, "was one of the most satisfying meals I've had in a long time. Thanks B.J. I'm grateful."
"You're welcome," she said. "I was cooking for myself and the girls, so a few extra hotcakes was no trouble at all." She smiled, and her dimples winked in and out. He wanted very badly to kiss them, and her lips. Her lips ... He didn't think she'd kissed many men, as incredible as that seemed, but she sure was a quick study. To distract himself he stood to fill her coffee cup and his own, then sat down across from her, studying her again.
Under his scrutiny, she felt nervous ... or maybe restless. At any rate, she wished he'd quit studying her so closely.
"Last night," he said, "you very neatly turned me aside when I asked you to tell me about yourself. Instead, we ended up talking about my work. This morning let's talk about yours."
She shrugged. "I'm a teacher. What's to talk about?"
"To start with, how long have you been teaching?"
"Eight years. Nearly nine, I guess."
"And in a boarding school. Is that why I've never met you? I mean, I've lived in British Columbia for two years, we have mutual family, so you'd have thought we'd have bumped into each other at least once or twice."
B.J. shifted uncomfortably, thinking of the fights she'd had with Melody so she wouldn't be "inadvertently" invited to Mel's at the same time as Cal. No accidents, she'd warned. Even one, Melody, and I won't come back here again.
"I suppose it's just the way our schedules have worked out," she said. "Your time up here covers the major part of the time—summer—when I'm not in school."
"You live at the school, don't you?"
"Yes. Odd, now that I think of it, but all of my teaching jobs have required me to live in. My first one was in an orphanage in Peru."
Cal's eyes widened. "Peru? Why?"
She shrugged. "Why not?" She wasn't about to tell him that she had tried to get a job nearer home. She'd had several interviews, none of which had panned out, and she had finally come to the conclusion that no school board was about to hire a twenty-one-year-old inexperienced teacher who could barely make it through the door of the classroom—not when there were so many others out there who were physically fit. "I speak excellent Spanish and they were looking for an English teacher. I qualified and they hired me." Sight unseen, she added silently. And then the food had been so terrible she'd begun losing weight. After the first six months, when she'd realized what was happening to her body, she had begun a tentative, timid exercise program to see if she could speed things up. Somehow, for some reason, that time, it had all worked.
"How long did you stay there?" he asked.
"Two years." She smiled, remembering the children she had come to love, remembering the joy and sorrow when one or another was finally taken in by a real family, and the agony on the rare occasions when the adoption didn't work out and the child was returned.
Watching her face, Cal reached across the table and touched her hand, curling his fingers over hers. "You loved it," he said, "but part of it made you sad?"
Narrowing her eyes at him, she said, "Artist!" as though it were an expletive.
He laughed. "I can't help it. You have a very expressive face. Why did you leave the orphanage? And where did you go after that?"
"Brazil." Why had she left the orphanage? Because she had lost nearly eighty pounds by then and one man a trustee, who just happened to like generously plump women, and who also just happened to be married, wouldn't leave her alone. She, who had never had to deal with sexual harassment before, had been ill equipped to handle it, and the nuns in charge of the orphanage had pooh-poohed her complaints. Senor Mendoza was a good man, a family man, and she was allowing ordinary friendliness to frighten her.
"Brazil was wonderful," she said. "I taught the eight children of one family—the da Silvas—and about a dozen children of people who worked for them on their estate."
"I can see you enjoyed it," he said. "What was best about it?"
"Horses!" Her smile softened. "They were—are—a wonderful family. They breed horses, and since all the children rode, and I lived as a member of the family, I had to learn as well. It was fantastic." But only after she'd managed to dump another sixty pounds. Then the riding had been just the right exercise to help her shed the rest of her fat.
"Do you ride?" she asked.
Cal shook his head. "Neither motorcycles nor horses, though I'd like to try a bike sometime. I took horseback lessons as a child, but it was never one of my favorite pastimes. Around and around and around a track was about as boring as it could get."
"I'm sure it was. That wasn't the way I learned to ride." She laughed, eyes alight as she remembered. "The da Silvas' head groom taught me, and after a day of leading m
e around and around as you put it, he decreed me ready to ride. We took off across the prairie at a nice easy lope that wiped me out in only twenty minutes. For the next two days I could barely crawl out of bed, but crawl I did, right back onto my horse. Within a month I was flying like the wind and it was the first time in my life I had felt real freedom of movement and—" She broke off, aware that she was saying too much. Drat the man! How easily he could make her forget herself. How easy it was to talk to him. But she should have remembered that, shouldn't she?
The only other man she had ever felt as relaxed with had been Antonio. . . .
Cal squeezed her hand. "You were saying?"
She pulled her hand out from under his and got to her feet, beginning to load the dishwasher. "It was ... a good time in my life, and I'd still be with them, I suppose, only Don Carlos was named Ambassador to Australia. It seemed he knew there was that possibility and that was why I was hired to teach his children English."
"Couldn't you have gone with them?"
She leaned her elbows back behind her on the counter and stared down at the floor. "They asked me to, but another family on a nearby estate wanted me to teach their children. And by that time, my Portuguese was almost as good as my Spanish and I wanted to keep it going, so I stayed." And there was Antonio, son of another neighbor, and she had been half in love with him. . . .
Cal stood and tilted her chin up with one hand. "And?"
Dammit, she wished he'd quit reading her face. "And what?"
"There's more," he said.
"Of course, isn't there always?" She pulled free of him. "But I should go out and see what the girls are up to."
At that moment Laura and Kara rushed in, all rosy-cheeked and sweet smelling like the crisp, mountain air. "When are you coming out, B.J.?" Kara asked.
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